25 Quotes About Animals That Will Make You A Better Human

1. "If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans."―James Herriot

2. "Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." ― Anatole France

3. "You think those dogs will not be in heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us." ― Robert Louis Stevenson

4. "We patronize the animals for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they are more finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." ― Henry Beston

5. "The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men." ― Alice Walker

6. "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." ― Mahatma Gandhi

7. "An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language." ― Martin Buber

8. "I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition;

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;

Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;

Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;

Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth." ― Walt Whitman

1. "We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be –the mythologized epitome of a savage ruthless killer – which is, in reality, no more than a reflected image of ourself." ― Farley Mowat

2. "Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms." ― George Eliot

3. "Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to." ― Alfred A. Montapert

4. "Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem." ― A.A. Milne

5. "How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul." ― Frances Hodgson Burnett

6. "Let us remember that animals are not mere resources for human consumption. They are splendid beings in their own right, who have evolved alongside us as co-inheritors of all the beauty and abundance of life on this planet" ― Marc Bekoff

7. "He could tell by the way animals walked that they were keeping time to some kind of music. Maybe it was the song in their own hearts that they walked to." ― Laura Adams Armer

8. "Clearly, animals know more than we think, and think a great deal more than we know." ― Irene M. Pepperberg

9. "Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us." ― Matthew Scully

10. "Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do." ― Gregory Maguire

11. "For centuries poets, some poets, have tried to give a voice to the animals, and readers, some readers, have felt empathy and sorrow. If animals did have voices, and they could speak with the tongues of angels—at the very least with the tongues of angels—they would be unable to save themselves from us. What good would language do? Their mysterious otherness has not saved them, nor have their beautiful songs and coats and skins and shells and eyes."― Joy Williams

12. "The other mammoths were as protective of the dying as they were of newborns, and they gathered around tying to make the fallen one get up. When all was over, they buried the dead ancestor under piles of dirt, grass, leaves, or snow. Mammoths were even known to bury other dead animals, including humans." ― Jean M. Auel

13. "Because we have viewed other animals through the myopic lens of our self-importance, we have misperceived who and what they are. Because we have repeated our ignorance, one to the other, we have mistaken it for knowledge." ― Tom Regan

14. "Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral." ― Charles Darwin

15. "Animals are the bridge between us and the beauty of all that is natural. They show us what's missing in our lives, and how to love ourselves more completely and unconditionally. They connect us back to who we are, and to the purpose of why we're here." ― Trisha McCagh

16. "Maybe it's animalness that will make the world right again: the wisdom of elephants, the enthusiasm of canines, the grace of snakes, the mildness of anteaters. Perhaps being human needs some diluting." ― Carol Emshwiller

17. "To see ten thousand animals untamed and not branded with the symbols of human commerce is like scaling an unconquered mountain for the first time, or like finding a forest without roads or footpaths, or the blemish of an axe. You know then what you had always been told — that the world once lived and grew without adding machines and newsprint and brick-walled streets and the tyranny of clocks." ― Beryl Markham